Re: [bug?] tg3: Failed to load firmware "tigon/tg3_tso.bin"

Olivier Galibert
2008-07-05T14:44:45Z

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 01:16:06PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> It almost never happens that you have kernel versions which _need_
> different firmware installed. In almost all cases, the older driver will
> continue to work just fine with the newer firmware (and its bug-fixes).

I'm not sure which planet you're from, but it's one without ipw2200
chips in it. And in any case, the file names change.

> The ABI between driver and firmware rarely changes in such a fashion
> that you have to update the driver in lock-step -- and even on the
> occasions that it does, it's not hard to simply change the name of the
> "new-style" firmware so that it doesn't stomp on the old one (Think of
> it like an soname).

Ah, I see, you just didn't read the thread you're replying to. Let's
do it again one more time.

The question is, how do you sanely distribute the kernel-tree
generated firmware in a binary distribution, knowing that you want to
be able to have multiple working kernels installed simultaneously?

Solution 1: in the kernel package
-> You get file conflicts on the firmware files that do not change
between kernel versions

Solution 2: in a package by itself
-> You either break compatibility with kernel versions that happened
before a firmware change, or you accumulate tons of files over
time. The accumulated form gets hard to create from source.

Solution 3: in the kernel package or in a kernel-specific package, but
the files are in a kernel version-specific directory
(/lib/firmware/`uname -r`, /lib/modules/`uname -r`/firmware)
-> Incompatible with current userspace

Solution 4: in one package per firmware file, with appropriate
dependencies on the kernel package
-> A number of kernel package maintainers just took a hit on you

Any other solution you can see?

OG.